An Untold Story
by hidden armadillo
Summary: "Leaving already, McKinnon?" Sirius Black drawled.  "Ah yes, I have to go collect some sea water and burn niffler hair at the stroke of midnight for a potion..."  "Liar," he challenged, and swept her up into a slow dance.
1. The Quest for Fizzing Whizzbees

"LENA!" a loud voice bellowed, and Marlene McKinnon found herself being yanked away from her parents and grandparents, who were presently indulging in a lecture on upholding the prestigious McKinnon name.

"Come on, the train will leave without us, and I've been waiting for **years** to finally get to Hogwarts!" James Potter, Marlene's neighbour and childhood best friend continued as he dragged her off.

"Remember what we did to Old Cranky Pants McPhee when he tried to force us to eat caviar?"

"Yes," Marlene grinned, "He was afraid of turtles and salt for weeks afterward!"

"That will look like **nothing** compared to what I will do to you if you make me miss the train!"

Marlene rolled her eyes at his typical display of dramatics and climbed aboard the train.

"You are such a little **girl**, Jamie," she teased, tickling him mercilessly.

James began to giggle, and jumped away from her hurriedly when the stares from other students alerted him to the fact his manliness was in jeopardy.

"Oh yeah? Then I guess I'll just go find some other **girls** to sit with, since you're too manly to count!"

Lena merely stuck out her tongue at the boy impishly, and he spun off to a compartment that a small girl with flaming red hair had just entered, clearly intent on keeping his threat of deserting Marlene.

Lena – deciding that although she loved James dearly, she clearly needed some less theatrical friends – wandered down the train in search of more people who looked like they might be first years.

The first possible candidate she found had long black hair and a rather nasty looking glare, so she came to the conclusion that this girl would not make a good friend.

The dark haired girl chose that moment to trip a miniscule blonde girl who looked like she was running late.

"Shrimp! Next time try doing your hair before you leave the house! And watch where you're going..." she sneered at the poor girl on the floor.

Marlene, who was outraged – and also feeling proud of her character judging abilities – rushed to offer the girl a hand.

"Who do you think you are?" she yelled, "You can't just go knocking people down because you don't like their hair!"

The dark haired girl turned her attention to Marlene, and smirked in a highly superior way that made Lena's blood boil.

"I am Bellatrix_ Black,_ and I will do whatever I want, especially to filthy little children who are too poor to afford a hair brush..."

The blonde girl glared angrily.

"I do own a hairbrush, I was just in a rush this morning, and I'd rather be a filthy child than a nasty, ignorant bully like you!"

"Well someone clearly needs to teach you a lesson!" Bellatrix snarled, and pulled out her wand.

Marlene – who hadn't learnt any spells yet and therefore had no magical way to defend herself – dived at Bellatrix, snatching away her wand and tumbling to the ground.

"How dare you touch my wand!" Bellatrix fumed, tackling Marlene.

The blonde girl, evidently grateful to Lena for defending her, rushed to aid her in the fight against Bellatrix.

This escalated into a violent three person wrestling match, with a crowd of interested students amassing in a ring around them, chanting "Fight, fight, fight!"

Soon, a prefect appeared looking quite shocked and astounded.

"Stop this at once!" he shouted, and everyone at the scene froze.

"Onlookers, please disband _immediately_. I am very disappointed in your behaviour."

The crowd dispersed, not looking ashamed in the slightest.

"You there, come here."

Marlene, who had been balancing precariously on one leg as she attempted to simultaneously knee Bellatrix and yank her hair free, collapsed in a heap at the prefect's feet.

"You are all first years?" he frowned, "Well, usually you would be given detentions or lost house points, but as you haven't even arrived at Hogwarts yet, I suppose you can be let off with a warning. We do not tolerate this kind of behaviour, understand?"

Lena nodded meekly, and the prefect departed, shaking his head.

"You're lucky the prefect was here to save you," Bellatrix growled as she turned to leave, "Next time you'll be crying for mercy..."

Marlene and the blonde girl chose to ignore that threat, and suddenly Lena was engulfed in a tight hug.

"Thank you so much!" the girl squealed cheerfully, "I'm Alice Prewett."

"Marlene McKinnon," Lena introduced herself just as a delectably enticing scent wafted down the corridor towards them.

Both girls' eyes widened instantly.

"I have to find the source of that smell!" Alice announced imperiously, "Are you in?"

With Lena's assent, the two girls marched off with their noses in the air.

Lena (who had become the designated leader after Alice's faulty sense of smell led them into a compartment containing boys competing to see whose pet could swallow the largest object) led the way in a convoluted path towards the ultimate prize – sweets.

Lena closed her eyes and inhaled the delicious scent, following her nose. She began to speed up as the smell got stronger, closer, until – SMACK!

"Ow!" she cried, crashing straight into something very solid and knocking to the ground with her.

"Mmhchfmk!" it grumbled faintly from underneath her.

Realising that the muffled growling indicated the object was, in fact, a person who did not appreciate being spontaneously squashed; Lena lifted herself off them slightly to better see their face.

It was a boy with dark, elegant shaggy hair and the dreamiest grey eyes she had ever seen.

The fact that those eyes were currently glaring ruined the mesmerising effect slightly, but she chose to ignore that.

"Hi," she smiled sweetly.

The boy continued to glare, confused as to why she seemed utterly unperturbed.

"Get off me?" he frowned uncertainly.

"Oh, right! Sorry!" Marlene blushed, suddenly aware that she was still lying on top of the boy.

She picked herself up off the floor quickly and turned to run away, making plans to hide in a remote volcano and host tea parties with salamanders until her embarrassment faded.

However, the boy had other ideas.

He grasped Lena's hand and pulled her back to face him, tossing his dark hair out of his eyes smoothly.

This seemed to be his way of regaining composure, as all of a sudden his eyes were smouldering irresistibly, and Lena found herself gazing at him so intently that she almost didn't hear him say; "So, what is your name, anyway?"

Her mind was too muddled to think of a clever response, so she settled for simply raising one eyebrow.

Luckily, the boy seemed to take that as intriguing, rather than odd and confusing, as he chuckled.

"Well, Mystery Girl, I'm Sirius. If you insist on keeping your name a secret, could you at least tell me why you ran me down?"

This, of course, reminded Lena of the sweets, and she fell right back into her original sugar-hunting-fiend behaviour.

"Sugar! Alice! Sweets!" she cried.

"Uh...what?"

Lena waved dismissively at Sirius and spun around in search of her missing companion.

After bursting into three occupied but Alice-free compartments, she eventually rediscovered the small blonde who had wandered into a compartment containing students with green edged robes who looked suspiciously like they were plotting something, and appeared to be holding Alice captive under the assumption she had heard too much.

Lena managed to persuade the plotters to release them, but unfortunately the conditions of their escape involved duct tape magically attached to their mouths to prevent them from telling what they'd heard.

Now forced to use an odd combination of grunting and charades to communicate, Lena convinced Alice to follow her and the two finally reached the cache of sweets, which turned out to be an old lady selling candy from a trolley.

Lena and Alice lined up to be served, and (after a nearby 7th year took pity on them and removed their duct tape) launched into a heated discussion on their favourite sweets.

"I haven't been able to eat chocolate frogs since I almost ate a real brown frog by accident..." Alice explained.

"They're too plain anyway. And sugar quills give you a nice buzz, but they make my teeth hurt. My favourite would have to be..."

"Pumpkin pasties?"

"No."

"Cockroach cluster?"

"N –"

"Acid pops? Cauldron cakes?"

"Alice!"

"Sorry..." she smiled sheepishly, "What is it?"

A dreamy look came over Lena's face.

"Fizzing whizzbees!"

Lena then began a lengthy rant about the bubbly deliciousness of fizzing whizzbees, and how anything that caused you to levitate must be superior.

After attempting to interrupt twice, Alice decided to leave that task to the old lady, who was clearing her throat loudly in an effort to get Lena's order.

Finally Marlene paused to breathe and the old lady interjected as one word; "Anythingfromthetrolleydear?"

"Sorry, what did you say?"

"Would you like anything from the trolley, dear?"

"Oh! Yes, please! I'd like all the fizzing whizzbees you have."

"Sorry dearie, I just sold them all to that boy walking away."

"What! That's awful! Thanks anyway...Alice, I'm off to beg the boy to share! Wish me luck!"

Alice waved and began listing her own desired sweets, while Marlene sprinted off and tapped the boy's shoulder just as he was opening a compartment door.

"Ah, you again. Come to tell me your name, Mystery Girl?" Sirius laughed.

"No, actually. I've come to ask you to **please** let me buy some fizzing whizzbees from you. They're my favourite, and apparently you bought them **all**."

"Yes, I did. I happen to be addicted to them. And sorry, but Pettigrew here dared me to eat them all in three minutes, so...they're gone."

Marlene gasped, and spun around to face the short, rat-like boy called Pettigrew.

"Why would you do that?" she cried accusingly.

Pettigrew squirmed under her stare.

"Uh, because...I – I –"

"Because he knows how to have fun," Sirius answered smoothly for his friend.

Lena's eyebrows shot up dangerously.

"Are you saying **I** don't know how to have fun?"

"Well I don't know you, but if you can't appreciate a good dare..."

"You call that a good dare?" she mocked, "Seems a little boring to me."

"What? Then what would you call a good dare?" he demanded, looking annoyed.

Marlene grinned, knowing she had gotten to him.

"Well, one time in our lake, my friend Jamie dared me to run – oh! Jamie!" she called to the head that had just popped out of the compartment door.

"Tell this silly boy about our dares."

James grinned proudly and began to speak, but was interrupted by a high pitched shout.

"Hey! Sugar junkie!"

Alice appeared beside them.

"I just found a kid who is totally afraid of my Merlin impersonation, and he says he'll give me fizzing whizzbees if I stop doing it!"

"You are officially my new best friend **ever**! Sorry, Jamie! Let's go!"

James pouted and watched his ex-best friend run away.

"You're friends with her?" Sirius asked curiously, "What's her name?"

"Yeah, we grew up together. She's trouble," he laughed, "Her name is Marlene McKinnon. But anyway, come on. I've got three packets of Filibuster fireworks, where should we set them off?"

Sirius smirked evilly.

"The prefects' compartment."


	2. The Evasiveness of Breakfast

**First Year**

First year passed in a blur of emotions for Marlene; initially confusion, but this was soon overpowered by joy for the most part, tinged with annoyance towards the ever-interfering James Potter and Sirius Black.

She and Alice (who had, to Lena's delight, both been sorted into Gryffindor) spent the majority of the first three weeks utterly lost and then in detention for consistently being late to their classes.

By the end of the third week straight of detentions, their transfiguration professor, McGonagall, was so tired of their non-existent knowledge of the school that she banned them from attending meal times.

Each morning they would receive a list of locations where their food had been hidden, and had to find them before class started or they would have to make do with the dry toast she had delivered to their common room.

Alice and Lena, being excitable 11 year olds, took this as a game of hide and seek, and somehow this actually did help them to learn their way around.

However, just as the girls were finally getting the hang of the 'game', James Potter and Sirius Black decided they'd like to join the fun.

"Get-up-get-up-get-up! Sirius!" James cried as he shook his friend repeatedly.

"Mmm, why..." Sirius moaned into his pillow.

"If you don't, the girls will get to the list before we do!"

Sirius (instantly awakened at the mention of girls) jumped out of bed and was dressed in under a minute.

The boys rushed downstairs on their tip-toes, sneaking through the shadows despite the fact that no sane Gryffindor was out of bed to see them.

Twin satisfied smirks appeared on their faces as one small piece of parchment was snatched up and replaced.

The boys cackled loudly now that their dastardly plan was in motion, and dashed out of the common room to complete their quest.

Marlene and Alice skipped along the corridor to their first location (a broom closet on the third floor, next to a painting of a goblin choking a goat in a dress), certain that a portion of their breakfast would be inside.

But alas, today it was not.

"Why is there no breakfast?" Alice cried in shock.

Lena, who was rather ruled by her stomach in the morning and therefore determined to believe her eyes had just temporarily broken, blinked rapidly several times and did not reply.

After the 23rd blink did not reveal any previously unseen breakfast items, Lena was forced to accept the truth.

Their breakfast was gone.

Alice, who had been glaring at the closet in the hopes of scaring it into handing over some food, spotted a note on one of the shelves.

"Lena! There's a note!"

Lena's eyes narrowed.

"Is it a ransom note? They want my fizzing whizzbee stash, don't they? Or my squishy panda bear slippers!"

"No, no. It says: _hello, darling victims. We have captured your breakfast. It looked delicious. So do you..._WHAT?_...just kidding. But seriously; we have devised a clever and genius and insanely smart challenge that you will never defeat! It is a treasure hunt. A proper treasure hunt, with __**clues**__ instead of McGonagall's silly list of places. If you don't make it to the end of the hunt...we will feed your owls to an evil Muggle creature called...a YAK! Or if we can't find one, you just won't get your food. Isn't that just so evil of us? Mwahaha! So, here is the first clue: If I were the most awesome person at Hogwarts, I would spend most of my time here._"

"Oh Merlin..." Marlene moaned, sinking to the floor, "We will never finish this in time for classes!"

SLAP!

"Ouch! What was that for?"

"Get up! We can do this! We are the much admired, incorrigible and indestructible – well, aside from spotted or pointy things, they're our weakness... – duo, Marlene and Alice! Fear our wrath!" Alice yelled at the ceiling, which may have trembled slightly in terror.

Lena, whose moroseness was unable to withstand Alice's onslaught of inspiration, got to her feet and began the brainstorm.

"Right! First: this is a very subjective clue. My idea of the most awesome person at Hogwarts would not be the same as Professor Dumbledore's... so who wrote the clue?"

"I bet it was the giant squid. I'm pretty sure he swore to get revenge on me for stealing fashion ideas from him..."

"Alice, I don't think he can write. Who else would do this? Not McGonagall, it's not her style at all..."

"The writer sounded pretty arrogant... calling their work 'genius and insanely smart'..."

"Oooh, and it said 'we'! So there must be two or more culprits!"

"Oh no. I know who it was. Of course..."

"James and Sirius!"

Several minutes of death threats followed this realisation, before hunger overpowered the outrage towards the boys.

"Okay! So if you were James and Sirius, who would you think the most awesome person in Hogwarts was?"

"A troublemaker, obviously."

"So they'd spend the most time in...detention?"

"But detention isn't a set location!"

"So...what else? They're always eating, maybe the kitchens?"

"There are kitchens at Hogwarts? Where?"

"I don't know, I just assumed..."

"Uh, let's skip that. Maybe..."

"A quidditch player! They love quidditch!"

They raced to the quidditch pitch, where their expectant eyes found...nothing, except grassy flatness.

"To the locker rooms?" Alice suggested worriedly.

Marlene nodded hopefully, and led the way.

Once there, they found the prize James and Sirius had left for them.

"Half a piece of toast?" Lena protested.

"And another clue..." Alice picked it up, already resigned to being hungry for a while yet.

_So you made it past the first step...congratulations. Too bad there are fifty seven and a half to go! Well, maybe not quite that many. But anyway, here is your next clue: who can you bribe with crystallised pineapple to get out of detention?_

"Obviously it's a professor, but which of them likes sweets?" Alice wondered.

"Oh, that's easy! Professor Slughorn! He's always sucking on those sugary yellow candies...remember? We got cravings for sugar last week and exploded our cauldron so he'd investigate and we could steal his sweets!"

Alice was instantly consumed with laughter at the memory, but managed to make it to the dungeons all the same.

Stuck to the door of Slughorn's office was another piece of parchment.

_We didn't expect you to get this far...but no fear, the river of lava and pit of giant elephants in your way should stop you! The next clue is...possibly the most boring place in Hogwarts...near a man who dances worse than Peter Pettigrew._

"What bores James and Sirius? Classes?"

"No, they just don't pay attention... the Studious Ones?" Marlene giggled, recalling their nickname for the girls who spent the majority of their time in the library (the other Gryffindor first year girls; Lily Evans, Dorcas Meadowes and Mary McDonald, and their Ravenclaw friend Emmeline Vance).

"No, no; James and Sirius are interested in anything **female**..." Alice rolled her eyes.

"How about the library?"

"Do they even know it exists?" Alice giggled.

"I didn't think so, but there's a statue of Nordan the No-legged next to the door, so that fits! Let's go!"

Upon reaching the library, a quick game of paper, scissors, rock decided who had to brave the wrath of the librarian.

Lena, who lost three times in a row, tentatively knocked on the door.

She was greeted with a loud shout.

"Aha! So you are the one to blame for this outrage! I will **not** have food in my library, you hear me! I have thrown it all away! But you can have this," she tossed a ball of parchment at them, "Do **not** do this again!"

The door was presently slammed, an inch from Lena's nose.

She decided to pretend she hadn't almost lost a major sensory organ, and unfurled the parchment.

_So I suppose you made it to the end of your quest, and retrieved your food. Yay for you. But don't be too happy, tomorrow we shall invoke the mighty powers of dwarf monkeys and lightning! Be afraid..._

_Sincerely, James and Sirius._

"Our food is... all gone?" Alice asked weakly.

Marlene's eyes narrowed to slits.

"They will pay for this."

_A/N: I know it's not very exciting so far, but these chapters are all really just build-up, so you can get to know the lovely characters a bit. I hope you enjoyed it regardless! =) x_


	3. The Impromptu Quidditch Celebration

SECOND YEAR

"Don't be nervous, you'll be fine. Seriously, I have no doubt that you will be an international star by the time you're 17. Personally I thought it was going to be because you'd be the lead singer in a crazy punk band featuring your lovely self and of course my instrumental genius, but hey; even I can be wrong on the details."

Marlene did not look convinced, so Alice shook her a little for good measure.

"Lena! You've been flying around with Potter all your life! You can do this."

"Right," Lena nodded firmly and marched down to the quidditch pitch, where trials for this year's Gryffindor team were about to take place.

James and Sirius were of course already there, looking supremely unconcerned with the impending proceedings.

"Potter! Black! Have you seen Remus anywhere? He promised to be the base of the pyramid in my two person cheer squad for you three! I brought pom poms!"

Alice launched into a vigorous rendition of her original chant: "Potter and Black! On the attack! Once they beat you, you won't come back! Woooo!" to prove her dedication.

"Sorry Alice," Sirius smiled in amusement, "Lupin is in the hospital wing, he's come down with what Madam Pomfrey thinks is dragon flu...but I think she's just in love with him and wants an excuse to keep him locked up there with her."

"Oh. Should I rescue him? Or perhaps I should come up with a get-well-Remus cheer!" and she skipped off, chanting happily about dragons sneezing.

"So, Lena darling!" James winked, "ready to show up the competition?"

"If by 'the competition' you mean yourself... then yes, I've been doing that for years," she grinned.

He tackled her in mock fury, and Sirius stood by rolling his eyes as the two wrestled on the grass.

"Attention, everyone!" a loud voice called.

James and Lena froze in a tangle of limbs.

"Line up in front of me! And get off her please; we are not here to assault each other..."

James saluted the captain and jumped to his feet, gallantly offering Marlene a hand.

"I am Jacob Thessley, the captain of the Gryffindor quidditch team. A fair amount of our players graduated last year, so lucky for you lot we have several positions up for taking. We need...two new chasers, a beater and a keeper. Of course we are still holding try outs for all positions, so if you can beat out our returning members from last year... you're in. Good luck to you all! Keepers, you're up first!"

Marlene hung back, tuning out the world until the call for chasers broke through her concentration.

She ignored the noise from the stands, the catcalls from the other contenders and the pressure to impress, and played like she had been playing all her life.

Her eyes narrowed as she took aim, angling the quaffle just out of reach of the keeper and allowed herself a small smile as it soared through the ring and she sped back into the fray.

Loud cheers resounded above the noise of the thumping music in the Gryffindor common room that night. James and Sirius decided that, as both they and Marlene had made it on to the quidditch team, a celebration was in order.

They had somehow procured enough snacks and drinks to satisfy an army, and left the decorations and music to Alice's fancy.

Needless to say, no one in Gryffindor was studying or sleeping.

"Let's dance, milady!" Alice yelled, and they climbed up onto a coffee table to demonstrate the lamest dance moves they knew.

"Ooh, stir the cauldron!" Alice giggled.

"The swish and flick!" cried Marlene.

"LENAAAA" a voice bellowed, interrupting Alice's mimed dancing of a pixie.

James' messy head popped up and dragged Lena off the table.

"You dare steal my dance partner?" Alice challenged mock menacingly.

"Only temporarily, I swear. But someone needs to get Mr. Brooding Grey Eyes onto the dance floor, and with your infectious energy and...force, I think you are the perfect candidate for the job!"

An evil smile spread across Alice's face.

"This will be **fun**..."

"I hope you realise that you will be fixing any craters or black holes created by the certain battle you just initiated," Marlene smiled.

"Oh Sirius loves to dance, he just doesn't know it yet. Now come on!"

He lead her across the improvised dance floor in a sprightly jig that threatened to wipe out half the members of Gryffindor and earned them cheers from the other half.

"Why James, I'd no idea you could dance with such finesse," Lena laughed breathlessly as he twirled her around.

"Yes, I hid this particular skill from you for years, just so I could bow out and watch you dance with Snot-Hand-Lawrence!"

"The guy who stopped dancing every five minutes to blow his nose into his hands? You made me dance with him on purpose all this time? James Potter I will **kill you**!"

At this point their jig degraded into a common wrestling match, which was equally cheered on by the surrounding students.

As the music switched to a slow romantic song one of the other Gryffindor second year girls, Mary MacDonald, strutted over.

"May I cut in," she glared at Marlene, somehow managing to smile simperingly at James at the same time.

Lena didn't bother to respond, leaving James to turn his charm on the willing Mary as she made her escape from the dance floor.

Or attempted to, as a hand pulled her back just as she was about to slip away in the crowd.

"Leaving already, McKinnon?" Sirius Black drawled.

"Ah yes, I have to go collect some sea water and burn niffler hair at the stroke of midnight for a potion I'm making for a friend..."

"Liar," he challenged, and swept her up into a slow dance regardless of her protesting.

"Alice is forcing me to dance and you're less likely to trample my feet than she is, so stop struggling please?"

"What is this? Sirius Black, pleading for something?" she gasped.

"Don't get used to it," he grinned, and the spark in his grey eyes returned as he swept her off her feet gracefully.

"Admit it, my dancing is impressing you," he smirked.

Marlene was saved from thinking of a witty insult by a large owl flying into her head.

The owl persistently hovered in her face until she took its letter and excused herself from the party.

When she reached relative quiet, Lena opened the envelope which was marked 'URGENT'.

_Dear Marlene,_

_I wanted to tell you this in person, but your father thought it best that you find out as soon as possible. Your grandfather has been diagnosed with a degenerative magical disease, and they say there is nothing they can do to help him. We will come fetch you in a few weeks so you can visit him, and also so you can be present at the celebration for your Uncle Reginald who has been unofficially named as the new head of the McKinnon family._

_We're very sorry, and hope you're okay darling._

_Mother and Father._

"Oh." Marlene said to herself sadly, and sank to the floor.


End file.
